Tuesday, December 8, 2009

What I'm playing this week, with a sigh

Still slogging away at the Dvorak. This is a stage I hate, when I realize how precarious the whole thing is and can't stop feeling I should be able to sound like Yo Yo Ma, even though I know I can't. And I wonder, why do I need to practice so much just to sound okay, not even great? It's discouraging.

I tried recording the piano part and playing the cello along with it. This was much less successful than the other way around. It's too hard to hear what I'm doing on the cello when I'm listening to the piano part through headphones, but when I play the recording through the computer speaker, it's not loud enough. I don't know how anyone ever got much satisfaction out of those "Music Minus One" records.

Most worthwhile use of my time seems to be practicing with the metronome. I'm trying setting it to click on each sixteenth note and then each eighth note to really get a sense of what is inside of each main beat.

Thanks, Michele. That would be another option. Actually, I can play the e-file on the stereo through i-tunes (we have a wireless network setup), so I wouldn't even need to burn a CD. IME, though, playing along with a stereo doesn't work very well -- the cello drowns it out. It's something to experiment with, though.

I felt like I was keeping up with technology pretty well until this past year, but now see all these kids posting videos on YouTube of themselves playing while sitting on their beds, and I'm feeling more and more out of it.

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Well-Tempered Clavier Project

I am on a quest to learn all 48 sets of preludes and fugues in Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, "learning" including memorizing. I thought it might be interesting to collect all of my Bach efforts in one place; see the list below. Clicking on the link will open the recording so you can listen to it.

The recordings are in reverse chronological order (oldest last). The earliest was recorded in 2006.

I am NOT implying that these are definitive interpretations! Rather, this is meant to document my development as an amateur pianist.

I have actually learned these others as well but never tried recording them; maybe someday I will go back and resurrect them:

WTC II/20 in A minor
WTC I/21 in B flat major
WTC I/1 in C major
WTC I/2 in C minor